Privatizing Petoskey school food services will cost local jobs

July 31, 2007|By Ryan Bentley News-Review Staff Writer

Petoskey school board members decided Monday to turn to a private contractor to supply all employees for local schools' food-service program in 2007-08 - eliminating 13 cook and cook helper positions from the district's staff in the process.

The board voted 5-0 in favor of food-service privatization, subject to the finalization of a workable contract that's also acceptable to the Michigan Department of Education.

This decision was made in front of an audience that overflowed from the Spitler Administration's board room. During the sometimes-emotional meeting, some in the audience displayed signs that urged the district not to fire their loved ones.

Several school officials said supporting privatization was difficult for them.

At the same time, they noted that the funding crunch facing Petoskey and other Michigan schools required the district to seek out cost-saving measures.

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"I didn't feel like it was a good solution today," board member Tom Rellinger said shortly before the meeting's conclusion. "It was having to choose between some bad solutions.

"I hope when we get through all this, we're protecting education as best we can."

Chartwells already provides Petoskey with management for its food-service program. In the past school year, the district paid the company a management fee of 3.5 cents per meal and an administrative fee of $110 per day.

If the district kept its own hourly food-service employees for 2007-08, these fees would increase to 4 cents per meal and $115 per day, respectively. School business manager Kent Cartwright projected this arrangement would bring a food-service loss of $52,000 for 2007-08.

Under privatization, Petoskey would pay Chartwells a 4.5 cent-per-meal management fee and an administrative fee of $130 per day to provide food service. The district also will provide Chartwells with $65,000 to help cover payroll costs during the company's first year of service - with those dollars to be refunded at the end of 2007-08, Cartwright said.

Even with the higher fees, Cartwright projects a $250,000 net savings compared to the alternative arrangement.

The privatization is one strategy which school officials were presented as a way to pare down a projected $600,000 shortfall in the district's general budget fund. Along with supporting basic educational expenses, this fund has helped cover losses in the food-service program in recent years.

Some audience members raised concerns that Chartwells would be using food-service employees hired outside the local community, but Cartwright does not expect this will be the case.

"The experience of the districts that have gone this route is that they've hired locally," he said. "They fully anticipate to hire 100 percent of their workers in the Emmet-Charlevoix area."

Petoskey's proposed arrangement with Chartwells would require that any of the district's current food-service employees who seek employment with the company be given job interviews, the business manager added.

Food-service staff have been part of the Petoskey Education Support Personnel Association union - which will see its current employment contract with the district expire Aug. 31. Contract negotiations for the custodial and secretarial staff represented by PESPA are scheduled in August.

Mary Lieberman, a representative from the Michigan Education Association who has assisted with PESPA contract negotiations, said she believed the union hadn't been provided with adequate time to negotiate food-service alternatives - noting that the negotiating team only recently learned of the options which would be presented to board members.

Though school administrators said they'd understood discussions with union representatives about food-service finances in recent weeks to be baragaining sessions, Lieberman disagreed.

"We have not exchanged proposals at all," she said. "The unit has asked for an opportunity to consider the scenarios we were given. Maybe there's some opportunity to work with them."

But Cartwright said he'd received an e-mail earlier this summer that seemed to indicate that the union viewed planned July discussions as bargaining sessions. He added that administrators had informed the union that the privatization option could be considered to address schools' financial issues.

"I am confident in my heart that I conveyed the seriousness of the situation early on," he said.

PESPA worked with Bruce Spychalski - who has many years of food-service management experience at North Central Michigan College and in Pellston schools - to devise a food-service strategy that would keep existing staff, bring Spychalski on board as a manger and provide the district with some savings. But Cartwright had some doubts that the estimated $88,000 savings target could be met.